Accuracy of heart rate detection is important in many commercial heart monitoring applications (e.g., heart rate monitors in exercise equipment, personal heart rate monitors, etc.) and medical heart monitoring applications (e.g., digital stethoscopes, mobile cardiac monitoring devices, etc.). Background environmental noise such as music, wind, television, traffic, voices, vibrations, body movements, etc., can introduce noise into signals received by the sensors (or other signal capture components) used in heart monitoring applications and adversely affect the accuracy of the heart rate detection. Accordingly, methods for robust heart rate detection in high noise conditions are desirable.